Middle East and North Africa

The Chilcot Report may have been written with a focus on the conventional methods of war used in Iraq; however, the government must heed its warnings as the UK becomes ever more reliant on covert, remote means of warfare.

The Chilcot Report marked a landmark moment in addressing the problems with UK military strategy during the …

The much-awaited Chilcot Inquiry, published on 6 July, was ultimately anticlimactic. It confirmed most of what we knew already: that the Iraq War was misguided and poorly handled. Condemning the aims and methods of the war, the faulty intelligence that provoked it, and the lack of strategic plan for its aftermath, Sir John Chilcot presented an …

Modern statecraft often has a fine line between the optimal outcome and a morally questionable one. Nowhere is this dilemma more apparent than in the Middle East – specifically the Gulf. It is unfortunate that nations like America and Britain, with proud histories of individual freedom and human rights, can be allied to oil dictators …

Palmarias of the Libyan Army destroyed by French air force near Benghazi, 19 March 2011. Photo: Bernd Brincken

At the end of a century of violence, the international community decisively intervened in East Timor in 1999 to prevent atrocities occurring at the hand of Indonesian militias. Conducting the first successful intervention after Rwanda and Srebrenica …

Ruins of a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in northern Syria. Photo: Médecins Sans Frontières

The international community’s continued inaction and blatant disregard for international humanitarian law (IHL) in Syria and Afghanistan risks pushing the laws into abstraction and undermining their ability to govern conflict.

As migrants landed in Germany and Finland on April 6, Der Spiegel praised Angela Merkel for making an active refugee policy for the first time since her open borders rhetoric. Arguing that the plan sends out ‘the right signal’, it said the deal would send the ‘message that those who are really in need of …

A young Syrian migrant girl is held by her mother next to railroad tracks where migrants wait to cross into Macedonia Sept. 2, in Idomeni, Greece. The number of people leaving their homes in war torn countries such as Syria, marks the largest migration of people since World War II. (Win McNamee/Getty Images – …

March 14, 2005. One million Lebanese – a quarter of the population – turned Martyr’s Square into the boldest most hopeful gathering the country had ever seen. And since, nothing. Yet, it was not that circumstances were lacking, far from it. Far from being routine and satisfactory, Lebanon’s national politics …

A view over Kos Town to Turkey in the distance from the Asklepion (by JD554)

I have recently visited the island of Kos which, due to its close proximity to Turkey, has received an influx of refugees. Those in Kos are part of about 230 000 refugees that have arrived in Greek islands (of a …